Tyranids in 9th Ed - Tactica

[Xenith]

Now we mostly all have rules in hand, anyone managed to get a game of 9th in with their swarm? Anything majorly different from before that we didnt pick up on?

[Spacecow]

Been on holiday and been building some pointy eared stuff . I might give it a go this weekend if the temperatures drop .

There are some really cool changes so it’ll be interesting to see how they fair against primaris stuff :)

[Malakithe]

Hopefully with all these profiles being updated and weapons changing that GW does the same to Nids soon

[Spacecow]

Hopefully with all these profiles being updated and weapons changing that GW does the same to Nids soon

I’m sure they will. It’ll be more a question of when :) it feels in the interviews they play tested a lot of nids too, so hopefully it won’t be too far of!

[TheNewman]

The #1 reason to take Sporocysts is to pump out friendly huggable MW balloons that happily flood the board with area denial. Then you combo that with the ugliest living weapon who also pumps out happy balloon friends.

 

All your opponents shooting will be dedicated to removing the balloons or risk death by explosive hugs all the while the rest of your list is doing whatever it does.

My Spore Mines have a new name now.

[Xenith]

So, any thoughts or theories on how nids can perform in 9th ed? What will benefit from outflanking/CP reserves?

 

Behemoth Trygons might be fun, appearing the charging on an 8 with reroll.

[WarriorFish]

Obviously I'm a way off any games yet (regardless of models it seems...) but I'm interested in finding out what everyone has learned so far. My assumption of boys before toys being as true as it has been for recent years remains, but that said I found in my experimental initial lists I ended up running out of Troop choices quickly. Part of that is wanting to run a lot of gaunts and Warriors, but also because I'm not sure about larger squads.

 

My experience has been that spreading the models out works better, and the addition of Blast weapons just compounded this. However with plenty of Synapse around at least I wouldn't have to worry about morale losses? With more models unit coherency is less hassle too, a gaunt is a gaunt so which one dies isn't too important right?

[The Pounder]

For troops I'll be running my Guants as units of 10ish, backed up with my Warriors for scoring and synapse.

 

I will no longer go into battle without my Exocrine and  Hive Guard,  I'll be adding 5 Zoanthropes to my list too, I believe they'll be a very handy and resilient unit.

 

I feel the key to our success as always will be a saturation of targets, I'm still only playing small games but that's my idea going forward. 

[WarriorFish]

Indeed, saturation has long worked for me with numbers (or generally) and gaunts aren't exactly difficult to kill :P Zoanthropes are quite durable if you keep them away from light arms (who don't care for the 3++ and will spam fire them down), though I'm not sure what sort of psychic punch they provide now.

 

What's your plan for the Exocrrine and Hive Guard that makes them so essential for your lists?

[The Pounder]

The Exocrine I will be placing in strategic reserve and bring it on at the right moment, there’s a stratagem that allows it to behave as if it hadn’t moved! (So shoots twice and improved BS!) I tend to run my Hive Fleet as Kronos so reroll 1’s.

 

The Hive Guard are a must imho. 2 shots at str8 ap-2 no line of sight needed and ignores cover! Yes please!

[WarriorFish]

I'm looking at models mostly from a visual point of view still, but these sound rather useful especially as I will have a lot of medium fire power at best with my main units so some heavier fire power would be great. Even if most of a nid force will be advancing in some form there's only so much room on the table and some extra reach and support will go relatively further for it

[Xenith]

Hive Guard have pretty much been a staple of competitive nid armies for the best part of a decade, I think. The fact that they can be completely hidden and fire at 100% is in addition to them having one of the better anti-tank guns in the nid army. S8, AP2, D2 is also going to be the new norm for punching marines off their feet, so they will only go up in usefulness. That, and they're awesome models. I preferred the auesthetics of the original metal one, but the plastics are decent too.